Читать книгу Her Husband-To-Be - Leigh Michaels, Leigh Michaels - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

DANIELLE didn’t know if it was the tone of Deke’s voice that made her shiver or the sudden chill in the air as the spring breeze freshened. She looked up at him—at the strong line of his throat under the unbuttoned collar of his pin-striped shirt, the square-set jaw, the uncompromising mouth—then let her gaze follow his to the house.

From this angle, the Merry Widow loomed over them, looking even taller than its actual three full stories. She could almost hear the house issuing a challenge. What are you going to do about me this time? it seemed to be saying.

Danielle couldn’t help thinking of a nightmare she’d occasionally had as a child, one that had played out the same way from start to finish each time she’d experienced it. No matter how hard she’d struggled to change the outcome, she’d been stuck; the same scary sequence of events had marched inexorably forward to the same scary conclusion.

It looked as if the Merry Widow was going to turn into precisely that kind of bad dream. Not only did they have the whole process to go through again, just as they had ten months ago, but they were just as unprepared. They hadn’t anticipated the Jablonskis’ defection any more than they’d foreseen the announcement that Miss Fischer’s will had left her beloved house in equal shares to her young friend, Danielle Evans, and to her friend, Deke Oliver....

But Deke was right about one thing, Danielle reflected. He’d effortlessly put his finger on the main factor that would keep the scenario from playing out identically. This time, they knew exactly what a tough sell the house would be. Ten months ago, when they’d still been stunned by the bequest, it hadn’t occurred to either of them that no one would want the Merry Widow.

It even seemed, for a while back then, that we might want it....

Knock it off, Danielle told herself. There had never been a “we”. There never could have been—and though Deke’s cold, blunt announcement of the fact had rasped her pride like a carpenter’s file on balsa wood, at least it hadn’t broken her heart. Danielle thanked heaven for being spared that particular pain.

She forced her mind back to the important question, the one she didn’t want to face because it seemed unlikely the answers would come any more easily this tune than they had ten months ago. What were they going to do about the house?

“Did the Jablonskis leave the furniture?” she asked abruptly.

“How should I know? And why should they?”

“Because it was part of the deal we made with them that the furnishings stayed with the house.”

“Agreements don’t always mean a lot when the pressure’s on.”

“You should know,” Danielle said sweetly. “I don’t think they could have taken out much without Elmwood noticing, though, and I haven’t heard so much as a whisper. Did you say you have a key? Maybe we’d better see what we’re actually dealing with.”

Deke dug into his trouser pocket for a brass key. Unmarked and without even a cheerful key ring to keep it company, it looked small and lonely as it lay in his palm.

The back door swung open with a creak. “Too bad it’s the wrong season for a haunted house,” Deke muttered as he pushed the door wide and dropped the key back into his pocket “This place is a natural.”

Danielle ignored him and stepped over the threshold into the kitchen. She was surprised to find that it looked almost the same as in Miss Fischer’s day. Except, of course, that Miss Fischer would never have condoned the stack of dirty dishes in the sink. “I thought they were going to remodel the kitchen.”

“There was a lot of talk about it,” Deke mused. “But then, they seemed to have all sorts of grandiose plans—at least while they were negotiating to buy the place. It’ll be interesting to see if any of them got done or if they were just talking a good game till they got possession.”

“If you’re implying that I was gullible in wanting them to have a chance...”

Deke’s eyes narrowed. “Feeling a little sensitive, are we?”

Danielle swallowed hard.

“Anyway,” Deke went on, “as far as the kitchen goes, they’d have had to install a new one before they could open a regular restaurant, as Joe said he wanted to do. But there’s an exception in the law for bed-and-breakfast places—they don’t have to have commercial kitchen facilities.”

Danielle pushed open the swinging door into the butler’s pantry and walked through to the dining room. The shades were drawn on most of the windows, and in the dim light the rooms seemed almost timeless.

The furniture had been rearranged since Miss Fischer’s day; if it hadn’t been for that, Danielle might almost have expected her friend to look up with a smile from the velvet slipper chair in the front parlor and lay her needlepoint aside.

But so far as Danielle could tell, nothing was missing from the public rooms. The knot in her stomach relaxed a little.

“Well, that’s a relief,” Deke said. “Though, on the other hand, if they’d stripped the place we’d have had a lot less to deal with.” He stared at the crystal chandelier that hung at his eye level above the huge oval dining table. “You know, if we just called in an auction house—”.

“Miss Fischer specified that the house and furnishings should stay together.” Danielle walked on into the front foyer and stooped to pick up the envelopes scattered beneath the mail slot in the door.

“And what’s she going to do about it if we don’t stick to the rules? Follow us around rattling chains and shrieking down chimneys?”

“Probably only you,” Danielle murmured, “since it’s clearly not my idea to sell all her treasures to the highest bidder” She flipped absently through the mail, then laid it in a neat pile on the carved sideboard that served as a hall table.

“Well, I don’t believe in ghosts. It’s all very well to carry out the wishes of the dear departed, but sometimes what people want isn’t very practical in the real world, and the ones who are left with the mess just have to do the best they can. Since we’ve already been down the road of selling the place as a package, with somewhat mixed results, I’m only suggesting that—”

“You know, there’s a problem here.” Danielle was hardly listening to him.

“Only one?” Deke leaned against the sideboard and folded his arms across his chest. “I can’t wait to hear what you’ve singled out for special attention.”

“We can’t just walk in and put up a for-sale sign.”

“Why on earth not? The property has reverted to us. Just as a bank can foreclose on a mortgage holder who doesn’t make the payments—”

“But that’s just it. The Jablonskis haven’t even missed a payment yet In fact, the next one isn’t even due till...” She calculated “Till Tuesday.”

“Joe said they’re walking out—leaving it all behind. A voluntary abandonment means that we have all rights back immediately.”

“I don’t doubt that you’re correct about the legalities—if Joe really meant everything he said. But what about Kate? She’s got just as many rights as Joe has, and I don’t think it’s terribly safe to take his word for what she thinks right now.”

Deke frowned.

“And what if they change their minds and come back?” Danielle went on. “If they were really giving up the last hope, wouldn’t they have salvaged everything they could—agreement or not? Not the furniture, maybe, that would require a moving van. But it didn’t take you any time at all to spot that chandelier and know it’s got some value. And it would fit in the back seat of my car, never mind the Jablonskis’ van.”

Deke was shaking his head. “If you’re disillusioned and sick of trying and you just want out in a hurry, you don’t hang around to disassemble crystal chandeliers, no matter what they’re worth. You didn’t hear Joe’s message.”

“But that’s just it, Deke. You didn’t hear it, either. I mean, you didn’t talk to him yourself, so can you really judge his state of mind any better than I can?”

“Believe me—”

“What if they decide to get back together just as abruptly as they seem to have decided to split? We don’t have any idea what their fight was about or how serious it really was.” She glanced into the music room, tucked under the stairs, that the Jablonskis had turned into an office.

“Those smashed-up statues out on the patio looked pretty serious to me.”

“Oh, really? A little while ago, you seemed to think all that damage was just Kate having a temper tantrum. Which is my whole point, really. What if it was just a silly quarrel and they do work it out? If they come back in time to make the next regular payment and find that in the meantime we’ve sold the property—”

“Before Tuesday? We should be so lucky.”

“You know perfectly well what I mean. We’d get hit with lawsuits from about a dozen different directions.”

Deke didn’t answer, but in his silence Danielle could hear reluctant agreement. Finally, he said, “A formal eviction could take months. So what do you suggest we do, Ms. Layman Lawyer? Just stand around and twiddle our thumbs while the place runs down?”

“I don’t know,” Danielle admitted. She reached for a leather-bound calendar that lay open on the desk and flipped the pages. Not every square was filled, but a respectable number were. And Kate hadn’t been exaggerating about the list of guests already booked for the strawberry festival, little more than a week away. “It’ll take days just to cancel the reservations,” she muttered.

Why cancel them? asked a little voice in the back of her brain.

Danielle frowned. What kind of stupid suggestion was that? Of course they’d have to be canceled. Guests would have to be notified or they’d show up on the doorstep and be fighting mad when they found a Closed sign. And she knew better than to assume the Jablonskis had taken care of that little detail.

“I guess the trouble is,” she said slowly, “that I just can’t believe Kate and Joe are simply walking away from this.”

“All this,” Deke drawled. “Yes, how anyone could walk away from this treasure is certainly beyond—”

“There’s no need to be sarcastic. They have a lot invested here.”

“Are you certain of that? I suspect they aren’t leaving behind as much as you think.” Deke sat down on the corner of the desk. “The work that’s been done—and there hasn’t been all that much of it—Joe did himself. The grand plans to remodel the kitchen obviously came to nothing. There’s a little new wallpaper and paint, but not more than a few hundred dollars’ worth.”

“It’s apparent,” Danielle said dryly, “that you haven’t priced wallpaper recently. But go on.”

“And though they were never late with a payment on the contract, they’d have been paying just about as much in rent if they lived somewhere else. And I have a nasty suspicion any cash that was left over didn’t go back into the business.”

“Well, they had to eat.”

“Just brace yourself in case they didn’t bother to pay the property taxes—because I’ll make sure you get your half of the bill.”

“And what am I supposed to use to pay if?”

“How about your half of the payments the Jablonskis have been making every month?”

Danielle bit her tongue.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been spending every cent on ...” Deke paused. “Now what could you have spent it all on? Not eating out, that’s for sure. You must have nearly every meal at work. Or rent—you are still living with your dad, aren’t you? Or travel. I doubt you’ve been out of town in the past three months. Clothes, perhaps?”

Danielle tapped her toe on the faded Oriental rug. If he dared take it upon himself to criticize her clothes, she thought grimly, she’d mop the floor with that elegant herringbone jacket of his.

Deke looked almost sad. “You really should have listened to me, Danielle, about the power of investments and compound interest. If you had, you could have been on the way to financial independence.”

“Not on half of the payment the Jablonskis were making. And what I spend my money on is none of your business.”

“Right—as long as you have enough to meet your share of the expenses. Even if we walk out right now and lock the door, there are going to be some bills along the way. We can’t simply turn off the utilities, you know. And if you insist that we just let the Merry Widow sit here and gather dust till we’re absolutely sure the Jablonskis aren’t going to reappear...” Deke pushed his jacket back and put both hands on his hips. “How long do you think that’ll be anyway? A month? Six months? Seven years, till they can be declared legally dead?”

“Don’t be silly. I’m not suggesting we just let it sit here.”

“Then what are you suggesting we do, Danielle?”

She looked down at the reservations calendar, still open to the pages set aside for the week of the strawberry festival. Then she squared her shoulders and said, “Run it.”

Deke stood absolutely still, while time and Danielle’s nerves stretched longer and longer. Then he threw back his head and started to laugh.

She folded her arms across her chest and waited, but her patience ran out before his hilarity diminished. “I’d love to stick around a while longer and be jeered at, but I really have things to do,” she said coolly.

Deke held up a hand. “No, wait. Just give me a minute to recover. The place is already a failure, so you want to run it? And do what? Make the hemorrhage of cash even worse?”

“The Jablonskis’ marriage is on the rocks,” Danielle pointed out stubbornly. “That doesn’t mean the Merry Widow is a failure.”

“I thought you said a minute ago that they probably just had a lovers’ spat.”

“I said... Never mind. Whatever their problem turns out to be, it has nothing to do with the Merry Widow.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain of that.” Deke sighed. “And you’re splitting hairs, you know. This is not exactly a record-breaking concern. If Kate and Joe couldn’t make it successful, how do you expect to?”

“They had to make payments for the house.”

Deke shook his head. “Oh, no. You can’t disregard the value of a capital asset just because you happen not to owe a debt on it. That still has to be figured into—”

“Will you stop being a financial analyst for half a minute and just listen?”

“All right. I’m listening. What is there to gain from keeping the Merry Widow open?”

“I’d never have expected to have to explain it to you, oh great fiscal wizard,” Danielle said crisply. “But then, most of your business experience is in the abstract, isn’t it? Stocks and bonds and mutual funds and things like that?”

“And since you grew up in the restaurant trade, you know everything about running a business?”

Danielle refused to react to the irony in his voice. “Being actively involved in a retail trade is a much more practical education than an M.B.A. We’ve already learned that there isn’t much of a market for this house—”

“This is news?”

Danielle ignored him. “As a house. But it’s not just a house now, it’s a business.”

“I don’t anticipate that fact creating a great deal more interest. Who’d want to buy it as it stands?”

“Nobody, if it isn’t running. That’s the whole point.”

After a long pause, Deke nodded. “You’re right.”

Danielle was annoyed. He didn’t have to sound so amazed about it or act as if the admission had been forced from him. “If our best chance of selling the Merry Widow is as a bed-and-breakfast, then it has to be up and operating.”

Deke shrugged. “All right. It’s true that a great deal of the value of a business is lost in the first few weeks it’s closed. Of course, that’s assuming that it had any value to begin with.”

Exasperated, she snapped, “So do you have any better ideas?”

Deke leaned back into the worn velvet cushions and shook his head. “You utterly amaze me, Danielle.”

There was a note in his voice that set Danielle’s teeth on edge. If he accused her of thinking this up so she could maneuver him back into her life.. Well, the sooner that possibility was wiped out of his mind, the better. She held out a hand. “If you’ll give me the key, I’ll get started. Would you like regular reports or will learning about it on the grapevine be good enough?”

“Oh, I’m sure anything I need to know I’ll hear about.” There was a tiny twist of irony in his voice, and Danielle noted that he didn’t waste any time digging into his pocket for the small brass key as if he couldn’t wait to wash his hands of the whole problem.

And she wondered for just an instant, as she stood there holding a key still warm from his body, if she was an utter fool not to have done the same.

The rich scent of roasting prime rib wafted toward Danielle from the Willows as she got out of her car at the farthest corner of the restaurant parking lot. She’d only taken a couple of steps toward the building when Pam’s car pulled in beside hers, and she leaned against a fender and waited for Pam to gather up her belongings

“Sorry I didn’t call you earlier,” Pam said breathlessly. “There was a crisis at school and Josh ended up at a friend’s house, so I had to go retrieve him and get him to his clarinet lesson. Anyway, I didn’t see any sign at the Merry Widow, and—”

“It’s there. Right on the front door.”

Pam sighed. “I might have known you couldn’t stay away. Honestly, Danny...” Her gaze focused on the back seat of Danielle’s car. “Why is there a suitcase in your car? Your father didn’t have another attack, did he?”

“No. In fact, I expect he’s already here, geared up for the evening.”

“That’s good. I could just see you having to go off to the hospital with him and me being stuck trying to figure out which people go with which tables. So why the suitcase? Are you eloping after work?”

“It doesn’t hurt to be prepared,” Danielle countered. “You never know when you might meet the man of your dreams.”

“It’s especially hard to anticipate the moment when you’re not even looking.”

“That is a bit of a difficulty,” Danielle admitted. She pulled open the main door and held it for Pam, who was carrying the bank bag and a box full of receipts. She was barely inside the restaurant when she spotted her father in the main dining room, moving two small tables together to accommodate a larger group, and she forgot all about Pam as she hurried to help. “Harry, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Getting ready for a party of eight,” Harry Evans said. He leaned on one of the tables and smiled at her.

It was a half-theatrical pose that did nothing to fool Danielle. She could hear the tiny wheeze in his chest, and she wondered if his heart condition was getting worse or if he’d simply been exerting himself more than he should this afternoon. “Dammit, Dad, you know better.” She moved the second table into position, bracing it tightly against the one Harry was leaning on, then slid the chairs back into place. “Let the busboys earn their pay.”

“Then why are you doing their work?” Harry asked gently. He rearranged the linen napkins and place settings and strolled toward the office. “If you have a minute, Danielle, we need to talk about increasing our orders for next week, to be ready for the strawberry festival.”

Danielle followed. “And making sure we have some extra help on call wouldn’t hurt, either.” Especially, she thought, since she herself was going to be wearing two hats right then—and both jobs would be demanding ones. She groaned. I think I need my head examined.

She straightened her shoulders. She was doing what needed to be done after all. And it wasn’t as if she was taking on the Merry Widow as a lifetime commitment, just till the Jablonskis had sorted themselves out or another buyer came along. Which might not be long at all if the strawberry festival was a success.

Harry Evans dropped into his office chair with a thud, and Danielle frowned. “I don’t have to go tonight, Dad,” she said. She’d intended to study the bed-and-breakfast’s reservation book tonight and try to plan at least a few days ahead. But perhaps she could just stop by the Merry Widow, pick up the book and take it home. “If you need me—”

Harry grinned “Now that’s the most loaded question I’ve heard in a month.”

Danielle leaned against the door frame and studied him. His color had come back, and he seemed to be breathing more easily. And she knew better than to treat him like a child. The man was well past fifty, for heaven’s sake.

Pam stopped sorting small bills into the cash register drawer. “Where are you going? And does this mean I’ll be shanghaied into acting as hostess for the lunch rush tomorrow? Because I warn you, Danny—”

“Of course not. I’m only going to the Merry Widow.”

“If they’re closed, how can you check in for a rest cure? Besides, supporting the hometown economy is wonderful, but if I were you, I wouldn’t stop within fifty miles. Too many people can find you if you stay in town.”

It wasn’t as if there was any secret involved, Danielle realized. By tomorrow, all of Elmwood would know the basics, the shopkeeper who had passed on Joe Jablonski’s message to Deke had no reason to keep her knowledge to herself “I’m going to be running it for a while. Till we can sell it again.”

Pam dropped a roll of quarters. The paper wrapper split and bright coins spilled across the floor. Danielle stooped to help pick them up

“Excuse me, but is this a time warp?” Pam asked mildly. “I thought the sale was final almost a year ago.”

“We thought so, too. But Joe and Kate didn’t have quite a good enough credit record to get a mortgage, so we decided...” Danielle took a deep breath. “I decided, really, that it was worth some risk to give them a chance. So instead of making payments to a bank, they’ve been paying us, Deke and me, every month.”

“Till now.” Pam sighed. “As your accountant, Danielle—”

“Please don’t start. You can’t say anything Deke didn’t tell me at the time.”

“But he went along with it anyway?”

“I didn’t give him a lot of choice,” Danielle admitted. “The only other serious interest we had was from a group that was going to cut the Merry Widow up into apartments, and I couldn’t stand to see that happen to Miss Fischer’s house.”

“So you planted your feet and fought.”

Not all that hard, Danielle reflected. But he knew I would if I had to—and by that time, Deke would have agreed to almost anything to be rid of me. But she wasn’t going to admit that to Pam; there were some wounds too tender to share even with a best friend “After she’d trusted me with it, how could I do anything else?”

“She trusted you and Deke,” Pam reminded her “You know, I’ve always wondered why she included him—why she didn’t just leave the place to you. She didn’t even know him, did she?”

“They met once. I went to visit her in the care center a couple of weeks before she died, and I took Deke with me.”

Funny, Danielle thought, that the whole mess really stemmed from a casual trip to the lake. They’d been on their way out of town for an afternoon’s swimming when she’d remembered Miss Fischer and told Deke she’d promised to stop by to see her for a moment. And he’d come inside with her rather than wait in the June heat.

Fifteen minutes, that was all. A quarter of an hour in which he hadn’t even been trying to captivate Miss Fischer—which said something about Deke Oliver’s charm. He didn’t have to try.

He’d stepped outside the room to allow Danielle a private goodbye. She hardly remembered what Miss Fischer had said, for the words had been unremarkable. Something about what a nice young man he was, a very special young man, but that obviously Danielle already knew that. And Danielle had hugged her and said, “Oh, yes. A very special man indeed.”

And from that tiny, careless comment, Miss Fischer—who despite all appearances had been a romantic marshmallow deep inside—had constructed the picture of a couple in love, a couple who simply hadn’t yet told anyone else about their feelings. A couple who’d need a place to live and to establish a family. And so, without a word to anyone else of her intentions, she’d called in her lawyer and changed her will....

And the fallout of that decision, Danielle thought wearily, was still drifting over them, with no end in sight.

It was nearly midnight when the last party left the Willows and Danielle could lock up the restaurant and leave. Harry Evans was still in the office, ostensibly ordering the extra supplies they’d need to have on hand when the strawberry festival began. Danielle knew, however, that he was killing time, waiting around as he always did on the nights it was her turn to close.

She stopped in the office doorway to put on her jacket. “Don’t work too late, Dad,” she said with only a faint tinge of irony

Harry shuffled his papers into the desk drawer. “Is it closing time already? I might as well walk out to the lot with you.”

Danielle could almost have recited the words along with him. She didn’t bother to argue with him anymore. If it made him feel better to stay around to keep a protective eye on his baby and then walk her to her car—well, at least staying up late didn’t hurt him the way moving tables did. Harry could sleep well into the morning.

Which was more than Danielle could. She’d have only a few hours to call her own tomorrow, and in that narrow span of time, she’d have to plan the entire weekend How many guests would be coming in on Friday? How long would they stay? What kind of staples had the Jablonskis left in the kitchen and what would she need to buy?

Despite the hour, the downtown square was still washed with light when Danielle drove through. The shop windows lining the streets glowed softly, showing off merchandise even though there was no one just now to see it. In some of the apartments above—remodeled in the past few years from dark, low-rent rooms into larger, more elaborate homes—windows gleamed. And soft floodlight spilled over the courthouse in the center of the square, making it look even more like a daintily iced wedding cake.

Danielle tried not to look up at Deke’s apartment. But it was hard to avoid; it was on the very corner of the square, so rather than just a narrow frontage, his apartment had windows down the entire length, as well.

They were dark, which was no surprise. What had she expected anyway—that he’d be up late pacing the floor and worrying about the Merry Widow? “Maybe fretting because I’ve taken on so much responsibility and he’s doing nothing,” she jeered at herself.

But if the square was full of light, two blocks away the Merry Widow was another story. Danielle had never seen the place so utterly black, its windows emptily reflecting the pale moonlight.

She’d intended to put her car away in the carriage house, but the walkway between the buildings was even darker than the house itself. At the last minute, she left the car under the porte cochere. But the key Deke had passed on to her didn’t fit the side door, so—grumbling under her breath—she walked around toward the back porch.

High above her was one faint gleam from a tiny attic window that the Jablonskis had no doubt overlooked. The feeble light somehow made the rest of the house seem even darker.

She pushed the back door open. Even though she’d braced herself for the squeal of the hinges, a cold prickle ran up her spine at the sound. Deke hadn’t been far wrong when he said the place would make a great haunted house.

“What a comforting thought,” Danielle told herself wryly. “Why don’t we see if we can conjure up a few spirits while we’re at it?”

There was enough moonlight to guide her once her eyes had grown accustomed to the dimness. She’d wait till tomorrow, she decided, to search out the light switches. And she’d run out to the hardware store for some night-lights, too. How had the Jablonskis expected their guests to get around an unfamiliar house in total darkness?

She reached the top of the stairs and paused. She should have looked around earlier; she hadn’t given a thought till just now about which room she should use. The Jablonskis’ quarters, she supposed. She’d never been there, but she’d heard Kate talking about fixing up the attic into a private suite so all the more accessible bedrooms were available to guests.

But it hadn’t occurred to her to reconnoiter this afternoon. She’d only been thinking of getting away from Deke and that half-mocking smile, that slow and lazy voice. You utterly amaze me, Danielle....

She heard a creak from the front of the house, then something that sounded like a long sigh. She froze for an instant and then shook her head and smiled. In a house the size and age of the Merry Widow, creaks would be a dime a dozen And the sigh was easily explained; the wind had picked up throughout the evening and there was probably no shortage of leaky windows.

She turned toward the set of stairs, only a little narrower and plainer than the main ones, that led up to the attic. She’d been there only once before, on her first inspection tour after Miss Fischer’s will was read, and her main impression had been of a single enormous room, full of slanted walls and tiny odd-shaped windows, under the high-peaked roof The room had been lit only by a few bare bulbs, and there were plenty of boxes stacked haphazardly, most of them clustered in the center around the head of the stairs, as if they’d simply been dumped.

But the huge room Danielle climbed into was nothing at all like the attic she remembered. The basics were still the same; the ceiling soared just as high in the center, and the outer walls still sloped sharply except in the corner tower room.

But there the resemblance ended. The boxes were gone and bright rugs were scattered over the scarred floor. Here and there she thought there was a new wall, blocking off part of the enormous room to create at least the illusion of private space.

Not that she could see much. The only source of light, no doubt the cause of the pale glow she’d seen from outside, was a single small bulb above what looked like a built-in bar in a far corner of the room. No wonder the Jablonskis had missed it; it was so dim that in daylight it probably didn’t show up at all.

She was too tired even to walk across the room to turn the light off. She certainly wasn’t going to bother to unpack, she decided, or to look for clean sheets. She’d just collapse atop the Jablonskis’ bed, and in the morning she’d take care of the details.

Or at least she’d get started.